


scarlet, sunsets & schemata

by Sampphic



Category: Kagerou Project, Mekakucity Actors
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Freeform, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Memories, Moving On, POV Second Person, Regret, Retelling, Suicide, Time Loop, no names mentioned, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25894720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sampphic/pseuds/Sampphic
Summary: "If summer can show me dreams, then let's go to before you were taken away..."
Relationships: Kisaragi Shintaro & Tateyama Ayano
Kudos: 7





	scarlet, sunsets & schemata

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 8/15! Stay safe, and try not to die!
> 
> It's about time I posted work here for another fandom, and given the perfect opportunity with this special day, why not try my hand at another writing style? I can't draw people for the love of me, but I have to bring something half-decent to the fandom potluck on August 15th. Might as well put my writing skills to use.
> 
> Crack is fun to write, but I felt like working on something more sombre. So, take this subpar freeform retelling of Lost Time Memory, written in second-person POV.
> 
> Author's note aside: TW for suicide

According to your digital clock, it’s twelve thirty-two.

Oh wait, another minute of your life has wasted away. Nevermind, it’s twelve thirty-three.

You sit in the light of your desktop, sipping more Coke to complete your unhealthily mundane daily routine. The dimly lit room is cluttered with an assortment of forgotten items - including but not limited to: crumpled volumes of shoujo manga, scrunched paper after paper, red cans of soda, red pens, a red jacket, red…

It’s all littered with that wretched shade of crimson.

What if you dragged yourself out of this hole, just for a few hours? You won’t find her, but through the glaring sunlight and unchanging heat, you might get to meet them - a ragtag team of blindfolded youths, donning a unanimous uniform of distinguishing jackets and eyes that glow scarlet. Inexplicably, one of them uncannily resembles an old friend of yours - not his unaltered likeness, but his avatar in a video game. Come to think of it, there was a girl with him too - by now she must be -

“Master, are you alright? You’re not looking too well.”

Ugh, you nearly forgot about the nuisance residing in your computer. This sentient, pigtailed malware who tampers with your passwords, digs into your folder of so-called homework though you haven’t gone to school in years, deletes your files and asks you to go outside. But what stops you from throwing out a toy that only parrots the same hollow, canned platitudes?

Without a second of reevaluation, your cursor hovers over the X and resounds with a sickening click. She crumbles to discarded data.

Good riddance.

Now to wade through the cyclical thought pattern that locks you into the past.

Within your mind, you paint a recurring pipe daydream that floods your psyche. During a lesson lit by the sunset, at the desk to your left, she sits with an unwavering smile on her face. Every detail of her features remains intact from your schema of her - dark, long hair, the two crimson clips holding it back, and the amiable demeanor that illuminates the dullest days.

Most noteworthy, however, is the madder red muffler draped around her neck. Rain or shine, hazy summer or frigid winter, you never saw her without that signature scarf of serenity.

The day she forged her last smile and climbed to the school’s rooftop, she enveloped herself in that familiar piece of fabric.

Tables neatly line the boundless space of the classroom, each one unattended save for a lone flower vase sitting on their surface. Ignoring the absence of your classmates, you couldn’t care less if it was just the two of you, folding paper cranes out of mediocre test scores and bantering for a perpetual afternoon.

As swiftly as the canvas filled with color, it smolders into flames to make way for a memory of regret. Warm pink, orange and yellow tinges of dusk fell upon both of you, as she timidly reached for your hand. Lost in sentimentality, you try to hold her hand until the bitter truth bludgeons you.

That day, you pushed her away and walked off.

If it means moving on from this dream, why in the world would you want to move on from the foggy past and stay rooted in here and now? It’s simpler to stay tangled in a web of nostalgia and unfulfilled wishes, than embrace your history and crawl back into the present.

Two years of emptiness and lamentation finally take their inevitable toll, as they crumble onto your last few shreds of normalcy. Nobody can stop you now, can they? Not your sister, who’s performing somewhere in town. Not your mother, who’s working shift after shift to stay afloat. Not even the pest that once resided in your monitor is there to half-heartedly console you.

You’ve brought it all upon yourself.

You turn towards the scissors on your table, sleepless eyes pricking with tears as your face contorts into a twisted smile. The last few seconds stagnate to a standstill as you reach for the sharp instrument, close your lifeless eyes and conclude this miserable chapter.

You swear you can hear it. A voice calling out for you, but does it come from a horrified onlooker or the depths of your faltering mind? It’s hard to tell anymore. Nonetheless, you futilely reach out to it.

And there you are, sitting in an undefined expanse and watching every possible end to your severed story flick before your eyes like a poor-quality film, living (or dying) each timeline out again. This is barely the end, but a frame out of hundreds of separate realities - and you’re not the sole member of the audience. 

She - the powerless queen who everyone tells the legend of - is watching, too.

A short woman with those goddamned red eyes, pale scaly skin, and serpentine locks of black hair stands by your side. The dethroned ruler of the Daze turns to the motion picture, then to you with a cold look of pity.

At an indeterminate point you exit the maudlin movie theater, to the surprise of your Gorgon spectator. 

Now you’re in a revolving classroom, with the chairs and desks moving past you as you stand in bewilderment. Wait, is that her?

That’s right - all this time, she’s been waiting for you in an inescapable, sealed-off world. Both of you embrace in reunion, crying in response to this long-awaited closure. She still looks the same as she did before that cursed day of August - however, her eyes glow red as they reactivate vivid memories of those days.

“I’m not in your current world anymore, but to everyone, I’m sorry. To my three beloved siblings who have lost their big sister, to my dear father who once had a happy family, to the cranky girl and clumsy boy who both of us knew so well. And to you, my best friend who I’ve left behind.”

Her smile is similar to the one that haunts your dreams - except her expression this time is not one of masked pain, but of catharsis.

For the first time in a finite eternity, you smile back.

Your best friend points out the exit - barely noticeable, it lies behind a slanted window showing the intangible void surrounding the class. Will you leave this limbo and accept the present, or stay here with your friend in the distant past? One part of you wishes to chase after her, beg her to stay, for you wish not to lose her in the haze of the summer. Strangely, this recreated scenario burns into your mind, as if you’ve taken this route of denial in a separate reality.

This time though, you’ll step upon a new path.

Reluctantly, you exchange your final goodbyes and begin to sketch out another route - but not before the girl of your past unravels the scarf whose presence you simultaneously curse and long for. Not a drop of rose pigment has faded since its last appearance, the shade of red that has crept into your life. As soon as you wrap yourself in its material, the muffler invokes new warmth within you, beginning to melt the layer of ice encasing your heart.

Wistfully looking back at your old friend a final time, you step towards the crooked window frame and into the blinding light. She cannot re-enter the world of the living, but you’ll live on. Someday in another life, you will both meet again and laugh with each other.

Now you lay on your bed, back in the living world. Back to gray reality, staring at the ceiling and watching the silhouettes of the past.

According to your digital clock, it’s twelve thirty-two.

**Author's Note:**

> There, now I'm known for something other than convoluted crack for an object show.
> 
> This was somewhat convoluted, but what can I say? I'm pretty proud of this, even though I'm still pretty confused by a chunk of the Kagerou Project.
> 
> Also, I learned about schemata from a two-year psychology class that at best, I got a C in. At least that's one more fancy word I can fling into my writing, I suppose.


End file.
